As our friend Dr. Roy Roberts pointed out, DC homebrewers grow hops. Yes, right here in our nation’s capitol humulus lupulus grows and brewers are hopping with them. This got us wondering, when did the first hop grow in the district?

Dr. Roberts pointed out that there are as many (likely more) homebrewers in DC making fresh hop beers today–in 2017 only Bluejacket and DC Brau brewed examples–than commercial breweries. And since he took it back to the garden, so too shall we.

We may never have the answer to the question, “What was the first year hops were grown in the district?” but we have found a key date in what we believe to be the very first documented record of hops growing in the district. That year was 1827, and that document is the 1827 Peirce Mill Orchard Catalgoue. 1827 was a year, according to Capital Beer author Garrett Peck, when only three commercial breweries stood–the Washington Brewery, the Georgetown Brewery, and the Alexandria Brewery.

1827 was six years before the first documented image of a brewery in Washington was painted. To date, the first existing image of a brewery in DC is a painting by George Cook titled “City of Washington from Beyond the Navy Yard.”

Tremendous thanks to Tim Makepeace for allowing us access to the Peirce Mill Catalogues, we present to you images from the 1827 Peirce Mill Orchard Catalogue. What we believe to be the very first written record of hops grown within the District of Columbia. Mr. Makepeace suggests Peirce Mill: 200 Years in the Nations Capital and we have added this book to our reading list.

Hops are mentioned twince in the 1827 catalogue, falling under the “VINES AND CREEPERS, FOR COVERING WALLS AND ARBORS” section and then again in the section titled “HERBACIOUS, MEDICINAL, AND CULINARY PLANTS.”

Below is the first reference. Although slightly different from the next reference, the general nature is the same. The reference reads “Hops, a fine variety” and then “Humulus Lupuli” as the scientific title.

The second reference lists “Common hop, very fine” as a descriptor and “humulus lupulus” as the scientific name. Spot the difference?

Should we make much of the difference between a “fine” and a “very fine” hop? What of “hops” vs. “common hops”? Or Humulus lupulus comparatively to humulus lupuli? We’ll be back with another post after we talk to more history and hop experts.

It is generally well-known that the north eastern states have a more illustrious brewing history than DC, Maryland, or Virginia. But that is not to take away from the prominence of DC’s brewing history. Our first brewer, Andrew Wales, sold Strong Ale to George Washington (ALX and DC share Andrew and Margaret Wales as establishing the city/cities first brewery). Our biggest brewer, Christian Heurich and the Christian Heurich Brewing Company, went head to head with Pabst, Schlitz, and Bud as they shipped trains full of lager from their breweries and bottled in town. Not only did Heurich successfully sell against the big brewers from Milwaukee and St. Louis, he navigated prohibition and was the only DC brewer to successfully do so, selling beer into the 2nd half of the 20th Century.

So while rich in history, DC, Maryland and Virginia often don’t go as far back as the first Dutch brewery in New York State, or the first Pennsylvania brewery, outlined by William Penn as early as 1684 there are lots of reasons to be proud of DC brewing history.

Thanks to Mark Lindner for hosting this month’s The Sessions, aka Beer Blogging Friday, Session #125 on SMaSH beers. Mark is author of By the Barrel, Bend Beer Librarian. We’ve never been to Bend, but we’ve brewed a lot of great beers, both ales and lagers, with Oregon hops.

We decided we’d write about our own experiences brewing historic SMaSH beers (an acronym which stands for Single Malt and Single Hop). We’ve brewed SMash ales and lagers and through our research we’ve uncovered recipes for historic SMaSH beers. Many have descriptors like “3,458 lbs malt” and “Coastal hops” or simply “Imperial” in reference to hop varieties, making them nearly impossible to pin down without secondary research.

We’ll answer Mark’s questions which he posed in his prompt hosting The Sessions. His questions regarding SMaSH beers appear in italics below.

Are they trendy? When would they be considered to be trendy? Have you seen/had a variant (x-infused, fruit, …) single malt and single hop beer? More than one?

It’s hard to say specifically when SMaSH beers were trendy. This depends on the location where you are and how long you’ve been there and how long you’ve been observing the local brewing scene. For myself (Mike) and Pete, who live in DC, many of our “hottest” beers are not SMaSH. Looking south, with Josh in Miami, many of the trendy commercial beers he sees are brewed with fruit and blends of exotic hops so that even if a SMaSH Gose or Berliner is brewed with all Pilsner (and no wheat malt) it will likely have fruit. If a Gose, kefir lime, coriander, salt, and if a Berliner, potentially other additions like mint, hibiscus, vanilla, lactose, and the list goes on. Though as you likely know, Berliner and Gose typically consist of a pils/wheat grist. You needn’t look too far in the Florida beer scene to find many non-SMaSH beers. With homebrewers its another story. Josh brews an incredible barleywine that is 100% Marris Otter and 100% Goldings hops with an English ale strain of yeast. This beer is incredible and I can recall brewing it with Josh and enjoying it with him when he lived in DC, nearly 10 years ago. This beer while only one malt and one hop, typically under goes a 120-240 minute boil. Effectively the process adds complexities that would otherwise be malt-driven.

We wonder about the style of SMaSH. Our concern is that varying fermentables, be they molasses, corn, or rice, might be considered in violation of SMaSH beer. In the link Mark shared in his announcement for the 2017 Central Oregon SMaSH festival, at least one beer there was fruited so we assume that leaves corn and rice in the realm of SMaSH beers. We certainly think it does!

For us, personally, SMaSH beers build our esteem for great brewers. Why use 10 malts when you can use 5? And why use 5 malts when 1 will suffice with a more challenging brewing process? They also show how the brewers who came before us were savvier than modern people think. Often in olden times beer process made up for what ingredients lacked. One article from the Sacramento daily record-union which appeared in 1887 said that the “choicest Hallertau, Wolznach, and Saaz hops are known in this market by name only; the real article is scarcely ever sent, because our buyers would not pay the price, so we have to put up with the inferior sort known principally as export hops.” Ouch! The article makes it sound like it was tough to be a west coast brewer making a Saaz or Hallertau SMaSH beer in 1887.

Do they fill a niche in any beer style space? One that matters to you? Are they a “style,” however you define that?

Quite often the beers that matter most to us are historical. Personally its a way to reconnect with brewers who were marginalized and written out of the history books, brewers of color, female brewers, and the Jews of the new world who cooked and cooled many a lagerbier. SMaSH beers often fill the niche in something like lager. Particularly pilsner, which for us consist of just pilsner malt and Czech Saaz or a German Hallertau variety hop. Of course these beers are much easier to brew today in that quality malt and hops are more easily available to source comparatively to historic homebrewers. Still, looking at the entrants from the 2017 SMaSH fest, the outliers were clear with only one entry for Berlinerweisse and Rauchbier. I think the styles of Berlinerweiss comparatively to pale ale or Rauchbier to IPA, couldn’t be more different.

Have you ever had an excellent one? As a SMaSH beer or as a beer, period./Do you brew them?

We’ve been lucky enough to drink AND brew (without sounding too pretentious) an excellent SMaSH beer at the recently-opened Portner’s Brewpub in Alexandria, Virginia. Owners Catherine and Margaret Portner, are Robert Portner’s great-great granddaughters, Robert Portner’s being one of the most important names in Virginia Beer History. Our beer was a SMaSH Strong Ale brewed with Golden Promise malt and East Kent Golding hops. We dry-hopped the beer for good measure which definitely moved it from a balanced historic Scottish ale with pale malt and English hops, towards the modern pallet. This was a collaborative beer with our historian colleague Garrett Peck who wrote a short biography on Wales. Wales is DC’s first brewer, as well as Alexandria, and in 1772, George Washington paid Andrew Wales over £8 for Strong Beer.

Are there any styles besides pale ale/IPA that can be achieved via a single malt and single hop beer? (How about achieved versus done quite well.)

Strong Ales, Lagers, and many other styles can be successfully achieved via a single malt and single hop. The same goes for Sour Ales (assuming you can use more than one yeast strain or yeast and other bacteria/microorganisms). Achieving a GREAT SMaSH beer is largely dependent on the brewer and his/her/they/them/ze/sie/hir practices and experience. For a dynamite pilsner you can use Weyerman’s floor-malted Bohemian Pilsner malt and Saaz Hops. OR a locally malted pilsner malt, if you’re in Massachusetts consider Valley Malt’s 2-row pilsner malt and Hallertau Mittlefruh. Or if you want to brew Vienna lager consider an all-Vienna malt SMaSH with your hop of choice. Or go historical and use Saaz. One could surely conceive of an IPA brewed with Golden Promise or Marris Otter and Cascade hops that would be recognizable to a more experienced palate, and still be enjoyable to those newer to craft beer. Why not double or triple dry hop? You could even dry hop twice and then tertiary dry hop in-keg if you’re a kegger and not a bottler.

Do they offer anything to drinkers, especially non-brewing drinkers?

It affords the drinker an opportunity to understand a specific type of malt or hop variety better, or better yet, drinkers are happy to enjoy a beer that tastes like beer.

We’ve recently started a historic homebrewing class at the Hill Center. The first class in late June was a huge success. It was a ton of fun to teach people about history while brewing and tasting a beer similar to what George Washington would have enjoyed. The bubbling homebrew kettle makes a great stand in for the fire around which we can tell stories about the past.

For any listeners who might be interested, we’re including our take on George Washington’s Small Beer Recipe. Mind you, our recipe was more of an attempt to recreate a small beer as consumed by the wealthier (especially women and children) at Mount Vernon and likely made by enslaved persons on the estate. GW’s earlier 1757 recipe was described in our class (and by others) as a marching beer or beer for troop use due to its very high molasses content and quick ferment period. Our recipe, with its higher barley content, is more recognizable to modern beer drinkers.

The recipe is designed for the homebrew novice, but all skill levels will enjoy brewing this historic beverage. If any of this sounds interesting, please consider joining our next class at the Hill Center on July 23. We’ll be talking about and brewing a Pre-Prohibition ale.

Last week, multimedia reporter Martin Austermuhle covered a fascinating development on a Capitol Hill ‘Shotgun House’ which was built around 1850. The article is a quick read and beer is not the central focus but it’s worth excavating the article. We wanted to try to put the information from the article into the context of DC beer in the mid 19th and early 20th Centuries. The article states, in a caption, “the team of archaeologists found a variety of beer bottles, including a Schlitz bottle from 1911 and an ale bottle” supposedly from the 1850s. Though no mention is made of the provenance of the bottle or how that was determined.

Excavation of the historic residence was spearheaded by Ruth Trocolli who is the official D.C. archaeologist. Trocolli has traced back the house’s earliest resident as German immigrant Ernst Tungel, who purchased it in 1853. The house remained in the family for the next 40 years. When Tungel bought the house in 1853, brewing in DC was 62 years old. Andrew Wales and his wife Margaret, DC’s first commercial brewer, set up shop in 1791. Wales’ brewery was located in Alexandria, which was incorporated into the District in 1791.

Moving right along we ask you to ponder the years of 1853-1893. These were boom times for DC and DC beer. But they were also boom times for the nation and not necessarily in the sense of a bullish market. 1853 was eight years before the start of the civil war, and lest we forget a massive number of immigrants made up the union army: 177,000 German born and 144,000 born in Ireland according to thesesources. More than a third of the city’s inhabitants today.

Mr. Tungel was German born and by the time Mr. Tungel’s property purchase turned 17, in 1870, Washington DC had 13 breweries. More than it has today.

The quote that drew us in was Trocolli’s discussion of the house in its place and time:

“We’re finding out about German immigrant community that sort of flew under the radar. They had a brewery down the street, they were buying and selling property to and from each other, and they had their own institutions. This was the fringe of the city, it was still the country at the time, there were farms nearby. And we really don’t know much about this community,” Trocolli said.

It is unclear from the article which year or which brewery Trocolli is talking about. But to say there was “a brewery down the street” is irrefutable. But perhaps a more accurate statement would be ‘there were breweries all over town’ or ‘many streets led to breweries.’

It is difficult to find record but we know from Garrett Peck’s Capital Beer that Beckert’s Garden, a beer garden which also had a small brewery, stood on Fourteenth Street, NE between D & E Streets, SE from 1850-1859. This is likely the one Trocolli is referring to.

Various owners brewed on the property up until its last iteration when it closed as the National Capital Brewing Co. in 1917. While Beckert’s name has largely faded from the history books, he is potentially the first lager beer brewer in Washington DC, and this is a BIG DEAL to brewers, cultural historians, immigration historians, German/American ethnographers, and any other person who believes the study of beer history and beer culture should be taken seriously.

Further west was the Island Brewery which lasted until 1858 at Maine Avenue between 4-1/2 and Sixth Streets, SW.

Another brewery not quite two miles to the north at what is today Stuart-Hobson Middle School. It started as the Juenemann Brewery and lasted from 1858-1863. It then became the Mount Vernon Lager Beer Brewery from 1863-to 1886, it was Albert Carry’s Brewery until 1889, and then finally the Washington Brewery from 1889 to 1917.

You’ll notice that many of these breweries closed in 1917. This was the year that prohibition was enacted in DC. Ask a dozen historians why prohibition happened and you might get a dozen answers. But we believe the following: xenophobia and the entrance of the US in WWI helped quash much of the beer drinking culture, both customs and regulations, prior to prohibition. In the easy-to-imagine scenarios, many Americans feared Germans. Other xenophobic displays included mobs who “harassed anyone who opposed the war, especially those of German stock, but also socialists, pacifists, and conscientious objectors.” Though she may call herself dubious in the role of expert, we have to agree with Dr. J. Nikol Beckham that prohibition was always racialized.

Looking back at the ridiculousness of the temperance movement, we cede that the prohibitionists did get one assertion right: people in the early 20th Century loved to drink beer.

So much so that in 1915, according to source material, Washington, DC, brewed 169,973 barrels. According to another source this large quantity was brewed by only four breweries. And nearly all of it lager. Only one brewer is listed as making ale, and the owner of that brewery was a German immigrant no less! 1915’s number, 169,973 barrels, makes 2015’s number seem insignificant. 29,727 barrels were brewed in 2015. A quick bit of math shows that the 1915 brewers made 140,246 barrels more than DC’s modern day brewers.

It is unclear if the 1915 numbers include massive out-of-town breweries like Schlitz who were sending beer into the District to be bottled for District consumption. One bottling agent for Schlitz was Samuel C. Palmer.

Mike Cianciosi is a font of knowledge and has a great site which gives input as to what Palmer was bottling, amongst other things, cider, Belfast Ginger Ale, and Jos. Schlitz Brewing Co.’s Milwaukee Lager Beer.

Perhaps if the massive nationally-shipping breweries numbers were taken out it would look like a more fair fight between DC’s brewers in 1915 and 2015. But, the following ad states “Jos. Schlitz Brewing Co. 3d & Randolph Place, N.E. Washington, D.C” yet there’s no evidence that an actual brewery which produced Schlitz’ lager in DC existed. It was most likely a bottling plant. Still, it is important to remember the massive influence lager beer has had, and fortunately continues to have, in our nation’s capitol.

Well we finally did it. Brewed a historical beer as close to 100% accurate as possible. We didn’t “take inspiration from” or brew “an homage to.” And as much as we’ve had tremendous success with “recreating” those beers, there’s just something so disheartening about lacking an actual recipe. When we do have one it makes the beer all the more special.

This special beer of which we speak is called Praize the Maize, and it’s a delicious drinker that will debut at the Lake Anne Brew House on Thursday, February 16, 2017, at 7:00 PM. The small 2-barrel batch was brewed with Lake Anne Head Brewer Jason Romano on December 12, 2016.

Poster designed by Michelle Schoening

More often than not we lack a complete recipe. Ingredients often seem up for debate, but it helps that we had a “complete” recipe. Quotes surround complete because while the recipe undeniably called for “N.Y. hops” the variety was not specified. Today New York state grows many hop varieties. Even in 1912 (the beer recipe date) there were multiple varieties grown by NY hop farmers. “N.Y. hops” might as well be listed as rice in a recipe…white? Brown? Jasmine?? Basmati???

The recipe came from the notebook of a friend, Paula, who’s grandfather, Paul, worked at many historic breweries, some of which are still around today. Paul worked at Lone Star Brewing Company in San Antonio, Texas, Anheuser Busch in St. Louis, and eventually the Weger Brother’s Brewing Company of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. These stints in his brewing career were prior to prohibition (generally listed as 1920-1933). Post prohibition he continued his work as Brew Master of the Buckeye Brewery in Toledo, Ohio (that brewery closed in 1972, not to be confused with the modern Buckeye Brewing Company in Cleveland).

Photo credit Buckeye Beer Toldeo, Ohio. All intellectual property therein or thereto belongs solely to its lawful owner or authorized user. Use believed available for educational and historical purposes.

Beyond his illustrious career as a brewer, he was an avid chemist and brewing student having graduated from the Wahl & Henius Institute and serving as Chairman of the Educational Committee while a member of the Master Brewers Association of America.

Photo credit Buckeye Beer Toldeo, Ohio. All intellectual property therein or thereto belongs solely to its lawful owner or authorized user. Use believed available for educational and historical purposes.

Back to the recipe. Pretty straight forward. It reads, “Draught Beer 1912” and calls for “Malt,” “Wheat Flakes” and “Grits.” Easy enough! After fermentables it reads “60 C. 60 C. 30 N.Y. hops” in gorgeous cursive. There’s no mistaking “N.Y. hops” but “C.”? Our research has lead us to this being a California hop.

To replicate the New York hops we used the Cluster variety from Crooked Creek hop farm. For California, we used an heirloom Cluster variety hop, called Ivanhoe®. Per Hops-Meister, the family farm who grew the variety, it “is Lake County’s very own hop variety that Hops-Meister has brought it back after a 100 year sabbatical. Ivanhoe® is a California original that makes you think of grandma’s garden. Hints of tomatillo, herbs, and veggies tantalize the nose of any beer that this is included in, and brought out through delicious pairings with food. Ivanhoe® is a dual purpose hop that has been named after the chivalrous farmer who gallantly permitted cuttings to be taken from his lands and offered many words of wisdom and encouragement to these pioneering California hops farmers.”

Following Paula’s primary sources and family history, we located Paul in Philadelphia in 1912 at the Weger Brother’s Brewery. Thanks to Rich Wagner’s Philadelphia Beer we know that Weger Bros. brewed three brands of beer: Bavarian Beer, Erlanger Light, and Hohenschwangau Export Dark. This 1912 “Draught Beer” was likely Erlanger Light. It is followed with two more recipes titled “1913 Bottle” and “1913 Export.”
Often in 1912, as is done in modern breweries today, beer that was sold across the bar or on your grocer’s shelves was called something entirely different by the people who made it. Today you might know your favorite beer as the brewery brands it, for example, “Lover of Lager Double Doppel Dunkel Bier,” whereas the brewer might simply refer to it in the cellar as “Bock.”

We are known to often utter the phrase ourselves and given that the 1912 AND 2017 recipes were 40% corn, we echoed Tom’s sentiment with our title, purposefully spelled incorrect. In Tom’s own words, as brewmaster at the Manayunk Brewing Company 20 years ago:

“People started to brew with corn for a reason, taste being the bottom line. Don’t scorn the corn. Praise the maize!”

I have always been obsessed with asking what happens next or what is still ahead instead of simply embracing what is in the present. Ever since I heard about Beer Blogging Fridays, I have been toying with the idea of hosting a Session to paint a collective picture of what the future related to beer will be like. This month, Beer Means Business has the honour to host The Session and to make this happen. The final picture of Beer Future will be based on what you think we will see MORE of. Over the last 10 years, numerous topics have been presented and the bloggers who discussed them expressed a rich diversity of perspectives or specific areas of interest. Therefore, I refrain from giving you further ideas or examples. There are no limits in time, space or nature either. I would like you to let your imagination free, and capture ONE thing you think we will see MORE of with an explanation of the idea.

“When are we going to make future beer?” Bobby Bump asked me. All this focus on past brewers and ingredients long gone had brought him to this question. For now and for the foreseeable future Lost Lagers will keep brewing historic beer. The future holds more history and more beers brewed with ingredients and processes long gone.

To give context to Brewer Bobby Bump’s question, we had just finished brewing the last beer in the 1812 Project, a series of three separately-brewed ales, all made from the same recipe with varying amounts of fermentables to create an 8% ABV X Ale, 6% Strong Ale, and a table beer below 3%. These three distinct beers were then blended together to make a fourth beer, 1812 Project Porter. This was a beer reminiscent of the beers brewed two centuries ago in the District of Columbia.

I poured our beer for a sold-out audience at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History at programming provided by the Food History Program.

And so when “new” beers of this ilk come around again centuries later, I like to follow and call attention to them when I can.

Speaking directly to Csaba’s question, “what’s next?” My answer is: what’s next is again. Or, what is past is prologue.

Currently that means enjoying the present moment watching the historical breath of styles increasingly represented. It’s hard to track this kind of growth in terms of historical accuracy. Certainly one can say “10 breweries brewed a Lichtenhainer in 2014, 12 in 2015, and 18 so far this year.” In a very true sense of the word this would show growth. But ultimately, it will take a true consumer trend to have a brewery feel a need to produce a Lichtenhainer every year, every month, or every week at their brewery to sate customer demand. And while a Virginia brewery won a Great American Beer Festival gold medal for it’s Lichtenhainer, I predict smokey, slightly tart ale WILL NEVER be a raging driver of American beer markets in the near future.

But I do think hops (their simplicity in one-ingredient name having an incredible ability to flavor beer) are still the future. But I also think malt is the future. Can these two survive together? How could they not?

I believe it will be a long time before the beer world thinks of malt as compelling as hops. Once brewers recognize that beer in 18-? (potentially as early as 1797) was hopped with 2-4 lbs per barrel, there will be as much tantalizing promise in resurrecting that old recipe/ingredient/means of production as the Jewish brewery owner did in Trois-Rivières. Indeed, they already have.

In the meantime I’ll leave you with this, American Handy-Book as all of us at Lost Lagers call it. A book of amazing help to beer historians. Go to page 795, and you will see the hopping rates or lbs of “Hops in Kettle per American Barrel.” So, American brewers, how about a London pale bitter with 2 lbs of hops per barrel? Or a Russian export with 3 lbs per barrel? Or maybe even a modest attempt at a Burton export ale with 4 lbs hops per barrel? Another request, that your barley be floor malted.

Finally, a modern comparative figure for hops per barrel that may be of assistance for non-brewers. Here is a link to understand how large these historic numbers are. A published homebrew clone recipe that is considered hoppy. By our calculations that is 2.5 lbs of hops per barrel (7.5 ounces hops per 5.5 gallon batch of homebrew).

José held out a small tasting glass of a straw-colored, hazy beer. We were gathered around a table in the back of a dimly lit Miami bar, about an hour into a monthly get together hosted by the local hombrewers club, the Miami Area Society of Homebrewers (M.A.S.H., founded in 1995).

“Yeah, absolutely. Tell me about it,” I replied, taking the glass and bringing it to my nose for a whiff. “Whoa.”

“I made it with ocean water,” he said. “Really?” “Yeah man, I was at the beach the other day and filled up two carboys before I left.” I took a sip, and after the initial shock of drinking saltwater subsided, I noticed that while pungent, it was actually flavorful, with a rounded mouthfeel, and even somewhat balanced tartness. Extreme, yes, but not bad either.

“Wait, you brewed this entirely with ocean water?” I replied, dumbfounded. “Yup, pretty nuts right?” While unlike anything I’d ever tasted before, it couldn’t have been unlike any gose ever brewed before. In fact, it had all the characteristics that we’ve learned to expect: salt, sour, and herbal, with a wheat dominant grain character.

So why was I so surprised? First off, it was unexpected. I’ve seen commercial examples of gose all over the U.S., made with watermelon, guava, or mango. So the concept of non-traditional ingredients is nothing new. And I was in Miami, where the traditional “rules” of beer styles and ingredients never made it past Customs. But saltwater in a beer? That was truly unexpected, even here.

This beer was definitely not Reinheitsgebot.

But then again, neither is gose.

The origins of the style are murky, and likely have layers of convergent influences. A bottle of the Original Ritterguts Gose, a “sour German beer brewed with salt and spice,” states that it is “a Leipzig tradition since 1738.” In Randy Mosher’s, Radical Brewing, and in Tasting Beer, we know that the style originated in East Germany, in its namesake city of Goslar, 120 miles west of Leipzig. And was available in those cities, as well as in Jena, roughly 65 miles south of Leipzig. The Goslar Brewery was established along the Abzucht river (the Gose river is a tributary) in 995 and brews a helles gose and a dunkel gose, each weighing in at 4.9% ABV. Though it’s unknown when the beer brewed in Gose became the gose we recognize today.

So we have the name, and geographic region, but that doesn’t explain the coriander or the salt.

Coriander (Coriandrum sativum var. microcarpum, var. vulgare) is a member of the carrot family, the plant itself is called cilantro, and used in cooking. The seeds, also used in cooking, are commonly used in gin distillation, in Belgian witbier1) Stewart, Amy. “The Drunken Botanist” p.156., and of course in gose.

Knowing that Belgium and the Low Countries were on-again, off-again, parts of the German empire throughout the first two thousand years, A.D., it makes sense that coriander would make it’s way into German brewing. Witbier from Belgium and genever from the Netherlands use coriander seed as an essential ingredient. But digging a little further provides additional insight.

The seeds of the coriander plant, unlike the pungent leaves, contain high levels of the monoterpene alcohols linalool and geraniol. If these compounds sound familiar, it is because linalool and geraniol are two essential oils commonly found in hops, and considered to be important factors in hop-derived beer flavor. Linalool (floral, spice) and geraniol (rose, citronella) occur in high concentrations in both Citra and Cascade hops, among others, and geraniol is a precursor to β-citronellol (lemon, lime) production in boiling wort2)Takoi, K., et al, “The Contribution of Geraniol Metabolism to the Citrus Flavor of Beer: Synergy of Geraniol and β-citronellol Under Coexistence with Excess Linalool.” The Institute of Brewing & Distilling, 2010.. So whether they knew it or not, these northeastern German brewers were “hopping” their tart, salty, wheat beers by adding coriander seeds to the kettle. It tastes pretty good too.

Salt (NaCl) is not uncommon as a beer ingredient, albeit generally a passive one; all groundwater contains ions of sodium and chloride. Additionally, adding salt to a beer as a water treatment, is a legitimate practice to increase mouthfeel3)Mosher, Randy. “Radical Brewing” p.55. and to decrease the perception of bitterness, and water hardness. And while the taste threshold for saltiness varies from person to person, the generally recognized threshold for sodium chloride is 200-300ppm (mg/L), meaning it would not add saltiness below that level, and would add saltiness above that level. One well-researched homebrew recipe for gose calls for an addition of salt at 735ppm (14g in a 5 gal. batch) for a gose reminiscent of Bayerischer Banhof in Leipzig, and suggests doubling that amount to replicate U.S. craft brewed examples.

It is quite possible then, that the groundwater around Goslar, Leipzig, and Jena was traditionally quite hard, requiring salt additions to round out the harshness and to make for a palatable beer. We’ll need to look into that. But common experience tells us that we develop taste tolerance to salt over time – the more (or less) you use, the more (or less) you need to use. I haven’t seen any consistent explanation as to why gose beer became synonymous with salty, but it’s surely possible that it evolved over time, first as a treatment for hard water, then later for flavoring as tastes adapted to the salt.

Which brings us back to the saltwater gose. One of the great things about brewing in Miami, is that there is no real limit to what should – or shouldn’t – go into a beer. Miami, as a microcosm of the resurgence of the style in the US, where one can extrapolate that more gose is produced than anywhere else in the world, is the perfect setting for a gose brewed with water from the Atlantic. And why not? Where is it written that your salt has to come from a shaker?

Being too quick to judge this homebrewed gose would be just as foolish as a Bavarian scoffing at the beer poured two hundred years ago in Leipzig. Salt and coriander in a soured hefeweizen, flaunting the Reinheitsgebot? Blasphemy!

But there is something about a gose that makes it the perfect summer beer, and maybe that’s why it’s found a foothold here in the U.S. It is simultaneously tart, refreshing, light, and – hopefully – just a tad bit salty. Add some fruit to the mix, as is common among craft brewers, and also traditionally (mit schuss, as is also common with Berliner Weisse), and you have the perfect beer for a hot, sunny day.

About two weeks after I tried the saltwater gose, I was back at the same Miami bar, Boxelder Craft Beer Market. This time sitting outside at a picnic table on a typically hot and sunny October afternoon.

Original Ritterguts Gose at Boxelder Craft Beer Market

The featured bottle of the day: The Original Ritterguts Gose, brewed from the traditional recipe, dating back hundreds of years. So of course I ordered a bottle. It poured almost identical to the homebrewed beer I sampled before; hazy and deep straw yellow. The taste, compared to the other, was subdued and delightful. Tart, refreshing, and just noticeably salty – a perfect accompaniment to the hot, sunny afternoon. My drinking companion took a sip too: “Oh, god, that’s gross! Why would you drink that?!?!?”

I probably should have warned her that it was not a hefeweizen, but I was too late. In responding to the rhetorical question though, I drink gose from time to time because it is unique among beers and quite complex, while still being light and refreshing. No two are alike, and new varieties are popping up seemingly everywhere.

It’s somehow fitting for an antiquated style from northeastern Germany, almost lost to history, to now be emblematic of the diverse and creative American Craft Beer market. And even though everything under the sun had been done a thousand times over, there’s a lot of life left in old styles, and more still to uncover.

Participants can talk about that first book that caught their attention, which brought them to get interested in beer; or maybe about books that helped develop their local beer scene. There’s also the -bad- role of books that regrettably misinform readers because their authors did not do their work properly. There are many different ways to tackle this topic.

In this world of misattribution, lack of legitimate sources, and not a fact checker in sight, it’s amazing anything is correct anymore.

But then, with longer-form formats like books it sets our hearts at ease to know there are beer historians like ourselves that take historical research VERY seriously. One of those historians is our good friend Garrett Peck. With this post we are writing to the theme of “books that helped develop their local beer scene.”

While Garrett’s 2014 book “Capital Beer: A Heady History of Brewing in Washington, D.C.” didn’t necessarily develop our local scene it did go above and beyond to document the history of the local brewing scene in our nation’s capital. In cataloging that long history of beer, DC’s scene does feel a new sense of legitimacy. For all of the “firsts” that our scene has experienced in the past 5+ years (first production brewery, first cidery/winery, first distillery), We still have an pre-prohibition OG history to celebrate.

DC is by nature a transient city. Representatives are re-elected. Representatives are unseated. New staffers come into town. There is the Presidential Transition Act of 1963 and the Presidential Transition Act 2000. And every summer new interns, “hill rats” as they’re endearingly referred to, flood the district and look for cheap housing. Yet it seems every year affordable housing gets less and less. Gentrification some call it. Others call it ethnic cleansing.

Not to veer too far from beer, Garrett’s book is important because it has informed many brewing projects that are of the utmost import to us as beer historians. We have recreated beers that the historic Washington Brewery at Navy Yard produced in 1812. We have also recreated the lager of the largest-ever and most successful DC-brewery with a pre-prohibition style lager.

Garrett’s book asks big questions like “who was the first Brewer to make lager in Washington?” While this may seem trivial to the casual drinker it is of dire import to beer historians today. Brian Alberts, a PhD Candidate at Purdue University, is currently exploring the rise of lager breweries in the Midwest as a lens to explore how new German immigrants navigated the market revolution and dealt with assimilation into American culture.

While pre-prohibition style lagers gain popularity, and are generally indicative of a beer brewed with rice and/or corn, there were of course all-malt pre-prohibition lagers. Finally, pre-prohibition connotes a time as the genesis of lager brewing is not a monolith. The time frame of lager beer brewing is different in every state. Garrett’s research pinpoints the 1850s as the decade of the very first brewing of lager beer in Washington, D.C. And that means that a pre-prohibition lager in Washington, D.C. could be 160-years-old or 99-years-old at the youngest. The beer brewed in 1856 was called “lager” just as it was in 1917 (the last year of pre-prohibition brewing in Washington, D.C.) but it would be naive to think that the means of production like raw ingredients, brewing materials, and fermentation practices remain unchanged. Lager is not a monolith and neither should the brewing practices and flavor profiles of modern pre-prohibition lagers be all the same.

Garret’s book informs us that the District’s first brewers were immigrants. The first brewers in DC were Scottish, English and eventually German. His book does a fantastic job of documenting the earliest Brewers in DC. But perhaps the most important thing in Garret’s writing is the thirst it imparts to search for further answers to questions as important as “who brewed DC’s first lager?”

While I don’t want to give away Garrett’s book I will post what he writes in regards to his open-ended question:

A June 1856 article in the Evening Star noted that Joseph Davison, owner of the Washington Brewery, had brewed 20,000 gallons of lager the previous winter, meaning that he probably started in late 1855. Davison also advertised in the 1858 Boyd’s Directory that he was brewing lager in addition to his English-style ales.

Charles Gerecke advertised in the Evening Star in November and December 1856 that he was brewing lager at his brewery at Pennsylvania and Nineteenth Street. Gerecke then disappears from Washington’s historical brewing record. He was probably related to the Gerecke family that was importing lager from Philadelphia in the years’ prior, whose advertisements pop up frequently in that same newspaper. (Peck, 34)

It is likely that the first brewer of lager was not even a German, but an enterprising brewer of English ales. Certainly, the story of immigrants assimilating into American culture is classic, but so is the story of appropriating immigrant culture for financial gain. But this blip does not hide a much deeper German-American brewing tradition heralded by DC’s Christian Heurich, one of the longest brewing and most successful of his generation.

Very few people today equate DC as a beer town. But with a closer studying of the facts, DC as a brewing center does have deep historical roots. If indeed, DC’s first lager was brewed in 1855, that’s only 15 years after what is generally accepted as the first lager brewed in America. That distinction “first lager in America” belongs to John Wagner a Bavarian immigrant of Philadelphia.

So, America’s first lager was brewed in Philadelphia 176 years ago. And DC’s first lager was brewed 161 years ago. At least until another beer historian uncovers an earlier lager elsewhere (we’ll be looking).

Our friends run ANXO, DC’s first post-prohibition cidery. This is an important distinction as it seems cideries existed in DC before prohibition, and even during prohibition.

The following link and snippet comes from an October 1st 1919 Evening Star article, which has turned out to be a treasure trove of DC history in regards to many things (never underestimate how racist America was until you browse century and nearly-century-old dailies).

An article from 1919 outlines the best cider apples and DC production of cider

The author states that the stand on Pennsylvania Avenue has been operating since 1884 and nothing but cider “passes over this bar.”

The variety Hughes Virginia crabapple is “the most wonderful cider apple in the world.” Winesap is also mentioned as desirable and indeed winesap and hughes crab are still prized by cider makers today.

If you don’t feel so inclined as to go to the original scan, here are some key points from the source:

“The cider market is being bulled…This sudden increased demand for cider may, or may not, be connected with the fact that the Senate has excluded non-intoxicating cider and wine from the long list of beverages banned…The back part of the establishment is a factory where fifty barrels of cider per day are turned out by steam power presses…Cider, made properly from this little red apple with the black spots has a peculiarly delicate flavor, and has the further peculiarity that it will develop 10 per cent of alcohol without a trace of acid. Of course, it need not be developed to that extent.”

The 50 barrels a day part is intriguing. Certainly the presses couldn’t have run continuously for a year. If they somehow did run every day for a year that would be an annual production of 18,250 barrels!

Peter and I are currently working on a book that details cider making in Washington, D.C. and the capital region. Is this the first cidery in DC? We certainly don’t think so but it’s been great fun to pull this thread. Details will come on further historical cideries as we conduct more research.

Friends of ours have recently opened DC’s first post-prohibition winery, ANXO, and they have opened with a great reception and to much fanfare. Their wine is not from grapes but from apples. They are also DC’s first post-prohibition cidery. Cider is classified as wine by the Tax and Trade Bureau.

A 1902 mention of Chris. Xander’s City Winery

The distinction of first post-prohibition winery is an important one as a century earlier a winery in DC won international acclaim for two of their wines, Claret and Port.